James Rosenquist: Waiting for an Idea

Off Paradise is pleased to present “James Rosenquist: Waiting for an Idea,” an exhibition curated by Natacha Polaert and organized with the James Rosenquist Estate.

On Waiting for an Idea, the exhibition’s title piece, a work created in 1966 and printed on an actual brown paper towel, the artist shares: “It’s really Eastern philosophy. After a day’s work, you march in and wipe your hands on a paper towel. You are wiping off the things you did all day, never knowing when your best gesture is made, when your creative ability might be showing.”

“Sometimes ideas come through the window, floating in from somewhere. That sounds like a poetic way of describing it, but I mean it quite literally. For all I know it might be electromagnetic signals or extraterrestrial rays or, as they used to say in the old days, a visit from your muse. All I had to do was snatch them out of the air and begin painting. Once that idea came to me, everything seemed to fall into place—the idea, the composition, the imagery, the colors, everything began to work. When a zingy idea enters your head that little initial blip so consumes you it seems like a thread unraveling your belly button. You get up and your ass falls off. It’s just this little hint you’ve found: “Oh, what is this?” It’s like a sudden flash of enlightenment. It always seems to start very small and then grows. Where does that come from? That little juxtaposition of thought and intuition. An illumination. People walk by it, ignore it; but I have a feeling that the most incredible things are around us all the time, and we just don’t have the ability to see them.”
— James Rosenquist, Painting Below Zero, 2009